Suing the Pope

Broadcast: 13/05/2002

Reporter:

The Catholic Church is in deepening crisis over its failure to act against child-molesting priests.

Church leaders stand accused of shielding predatory priests while ignoring, even intimidating, victims and their families.

Last month US cardinals held an emergency summit in the Vatican to wrestle with the scandal that's said to be costing the US Church more than $1 billion dollars - including nearly $60 million for abuses committed by one priest.

Victims are fighting back and, as Four Corners reports, they are taking their cases right to the top... by suing the Vatican.

This program from the BBC'sCorrespondent tells the disturbing story of one group of victims and their abuser, Fr Sean Fortune.

The newly ordained priest cut an energetic, even dashing, figure when he first appeared in a small Irish village called Fethard-on-Sea.

What locals didn’t know - but church leaders allegedly did know - was that Fr Fortune was a brutal sexual predator.

Fr Fortune relentlessly abused and blackmailed boys of the village into silence, while fleecing old people of their savings and ripping off government job schemes.

Locals complained to the bishop, the Papal Nuncio and the Vatican. Nothing was done.

When one victim went to the police, the ensuing investigation led to Fr Fortune being charged with 66 counts of buggery and indecent assault. 

With the backing of church lawyers Fr Fortune dragged out the legal process for four years until 1999, when he committed suicide after the first week of his criminal trial.

Four boys from the village of 200 families have also committed suicide, their deaths blamed on Fr Fortune.

Now surviving victims are suing the former bishop and the Pope for ordaining a known paedophile and doing nothing to stop him abusing.

Through the testimony of these now adult men and the mother of one suicide victim, this program examines the church's refusal to acknowledge the abuse and trauma caused by Fr Fortune. 

It is a story being told across the world as the scale of clerical abuse unfolds.

"Suing the Pope" was first broadcast on ABC TV on Monday 13 May, 2002